Wearing his lion kill. 
Friday, 24 July 2009
The rest of the game drives today were continual moments of discovery. Watching animals in their natural habitat... free... not behind bars in a zoo... was a wonderful thing indeed. However, the highlight of today's experience was visiting the Maasai Village that was about a 20 min drive from Governor's Camp. There are 42 tribes in Kenya. The local tribe on the Masai Mara Game Reserves is the Maasai, which is a male dominated tribe that lives primitively in dung huts with no modern conveniences of running water and electricity. The dung huts are about 7' x 10' and are inhabited by an average household of 7 people and 1 goat. Wealth for the Maasai men is conveyed by the number of cows and wives owned. Each wife and children get their own hut, but are cloistered side by side so that the husband can easily visit each one. At age 16, young male teens leave the village for a short spell to undergo the rites of manhood. They go to the bushlands to make their first lion kill. The women play a submissive and hard role. They do all the manual labor for the village. They build the dung huts which are made out of cow dung, clay, soil and twigs. The huts take 3 months to construct, but the women also have to bear and/or take care of children; fetch water from the river an hour away; cook; clean; tend cows, goats, and chickens; and make the livelihood for the village by handmaking all the crafts purchased by tourists such as beaded jewelry, masks, hand carved wooden animals, handwoven baskets and fabrics. Girls in the village undergo genital circumcision (labia mutilation) before puberty, although the government has imposed legal sanctions to stop the brutal practice. The boys in the village undergo genital circumcision between the age of 14-18 y/o, but they are given a choice. The girls are subject to arranged marriages between the age of 14-15 y/o. Although there is a community school away from the village that goes from year 1 to year 8 (a.k.a. 1st - 8th grade in the U.S.), girls are not likely to finish school beyond year 6 because of marriage commitments at a young age. The intended groom must pay a bride dowry in cows. Governors' Camp donates a percentage of their profits to fund the school's operations, running water, and medical clinic. They also provide butane gas and single burner camp stoves in each of the huts, so that women no longer have to burn cow dung fuel. The children walk 2 hours to school, walk 2 hours back for lunch, walk 2 hours for afternoon classes, and then walk the 2 hours back home. The school comes at a price for the tribe since education has led young graduates to find their way into the modern world and out of the primitive lifestyle of the village. The tribe I visited consisted of 210 individuals, 93 of which were children. When we arrived, the women came out and sang us a welcoming song. Following their performance, the men sang and executed their jumping dance. We toured a hut, and then were taken to a stockade filled with tables of handcrafted artifacts. It was a humbling visit and made me realize just how fortunate the U.S. was because even at our poorest, we could never equate to the poverty of the Maasai.
The rest of the game drives today were continual moments of discovery. Watching animals in their natural habitat... free... not behind bars in a zoo... was a wonderful thing indeed. However, the highlight of today's experience was visiting the Maasai Village that was about a 20 min drive from Governor's Camp. There are 42 tribes in Kenya. The local tribe on the Masai Mara Game Reserves is the Maasai, which is a male dominated tribe that lives primitively in dung huts with no modern conveniences of running water and electricity. The dung huts are about 7' x 10' and are inhabited by an average household of 7 people and 1 goat. Wealth for the Maasai men is conveyed by the number of cows and wives owned. Each wife and children get their own hut, but are cloistered side by side so that the husband can easily visit each one. At age 16, young male teens leave the village for a short spell to undergo the rites of manhood. They go to the bushlands to make their first lion kill. The women play a submissive and hard role. They do all the manual labor for the village. They build the dung huts which are made out of cow dung, clay, soil and twigs. The huts take 3 months to construct, but the women also have to bear and/or take care of children; fetch water from the river an hour away; cook; clean; tend cows, goats, and chickens; and make the livelihood for the village by handmaking all the crafts purchased by tourists such as beaded jewelry, masks, hand carved wooden animals, handwoven baskets and fabrics. Girls in the village undergo genital circumcision (labia mutilation) before puberty, although the government has imposed legal sanctions to stop the brutal practice. The boys in the village undergo genital circumcision between the age of 14-18 y/o, but they are given a choice. The girls are subject to arranged marriages between the age of 14-15 y/o. Although there is a community school away from the village that goes from year 1 to year 8 (a.k.a. 1st - 8th grade in the U.S.), girls are not likely to finish school beyond year 6 because of marriage commitments at a young age. The intended groom must pay a bride dowry in cows. Governors' Camp donates a percentage of their profits to fund the school's operations, running water, and medical clinic. They also provide butane gas and single burner camp stoves in each of the huts, so that women no longer have to burn cow dung fuel. The children walk 2 hours to school, walk 2 hours back for lunch, walk 2 hours for afternoon classes, and then walk the 2 hours back home. The school comes at a price for the tribe since education has led young graduates to find their way into the modern world and out of the primitive lifestyle of the village. The tribe I visited consisted of 210 individuals, 93 of which were children. When we arrived, the women came out and sang us a welcoming song. Following their performance, the men sang and executed their jumping dance. We toured a hut, and then were taken to a stockade filled with tables of handcrafted artifacts. It was a humbling visit and made me realize just how fortunate the U.S. was because even at our poorest, we could never equate to the poverty of the Maasai.
